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The recent gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi on December 16, 2012 and her subsequent death attracted worldwide attention and provoked mass protests against sexual assault, not just in India but also in other countries in South Asia. In this talk, Dr Seema Khanwalkar will present her analysis of the widespread debate among academics, women’s groups, the media, and the broader public on the status of women in India. She argues that in all the debates, angry conversations, and media discussions in India, the imperative seems to be to find someone or some aspect of urban life to blame – popular culture, Bombay films, television serials, advertising, migrated populations, laborers, and unemployment. Dr. Khanwalkar seeks to go deeper and understand this event not just in terms of the rationale behind the crime, but the course that life seems to be taking in contemporary India in psychoanalytical terms, in the context of human relationships, interaction between and across gender, and changing notions of identity.

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